Re: The night before the weekly shop fridge clear out ideas

We've been on a weekly fruit and veg shop for eight years or so as we buy from the markets. I kind of like the cycle of plenty and little. Saturday morning sees the fruit bowls brimming and the fridge is treated like a game of Tetris for a few days.

Re: The night before the weekly shop fridge clear out ideas

The White Rabbit wrote:

We sometimes, and unintentionally, have mystery meat night as a result of forgetting what something is....or defrosting it to find out it's a different cut.

I label everything in my freezer. I keep a bunch of adhesive labels and a pen in the drawer next to the fridge and don't put anything away without labeling. Sometimes I think to myself "I'll put the label on tomorrow" and then I always forget lol.

Re: The night before the weekly shop fridge clear out ideas

last night before shopping is delivered - thats me tonight. I do have plenty of things in the freezer, but I like to clear out the fridge and clean it out ready to be restocked.

I have the normal left over bits - a sad looking piece of cheese, a packet of puff pastry about 2 pints of milk ( but I will need that for breakfast ). I am lucky that I chickens so always loads of eggs, and the allotment and greenhouse is bursting at the moment so onions, carrots, chard, pototoes, courgettes, green beans are plenty full and only five minutes walk away. Salad stuff is flooding out of the greenhouse, and I have so many herbs I am drying them for the winter.

So dinner tonight - I think the pastry and cheese into cheese and onion pasty with salad. That just means I need to produce school / work lunches for tomorrow ( salad and open a tin of Tuna I think) then shopping comes tomorrow afternoon and another week starts.

Re: The night before the weekly shop fridge clear out ideas

The White Rabbit wrote:

I never get around to it. Most things I recognize. But if I got a deep freeze I'd have to label.

Recognize yes, but can you remember off the top of your head the date you stored it? To me that's really important because things in the freezer don't last forever just because they're frozen. Meats, fish, especially ground meat has a short life even in the freezer. I keep loads of stock in there too and those don't last forever either.

Re: The night before the weekly shop fridge clear out ideas

Our freezer is just the one at the bottom of the fridge so the usual storage time is less than a month for most things. Anything I lose track of gets thrown out. It doesn't happen very often. But like I said if I had a large deep freeze I'd need to be more organized.

Re: The night before the weekly shop fridge clear out ideas

Today was definitely one of those last little bits left at the end of the week days. So far I turned yesterday's leftover salad, plus half a courgette, a leek, 2 potatoes and some baby carrots into soup for lunch, using up the remaining beef stock that was lurking in the fridge and the last onion. I've currently got a mushroom soup simmering gently away with all the stalks I kept from mushrooms used during the week. Put in a pan with some butter, an onion, some rehydrated dried mushrooms, lots of garlic, a bit of thyme and some chicken stock, it'll make a great soup for the freezer, and I can turn it into cream of mushroom if I need to. The last little bit of mousetrap cheese that was sitting making me feel guilty was grated into a bowl with an egg and some ground almonds, salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper and turned into crackers to go with our soup for lunch.

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